SAMURAI WARRIORS 2
Original Release: Koei, 2006, PlayStation 2/Xbox 360
Other Releases: PC (2008), PlayStation3/Vita (2013)
The Samurai Warriors sequel cleaned up some of the prequel's missteps and expanded the gameplay offerings to get the series back on track
Samurai Warriors 2 (PS2, Koei, 2006)
Where to Buy: Amazon
How to Emulate: PlayStation 2 Emulation Guide
Review by: C. M0use
The second Samurai Warriors game is fundamentally pretty samey, as you'd expect from musou of the era, but is a superior product by way of cleaning up some of the big "experimental" mistakes of the first game and expanding the content quite a bit.
The first game was centered on the rise and fall of Nobunaga, that core story is retained but you get some more side stories in the spotlight and elements that go beyond his death farther into the "warring states" period. That translates into more characters and more maps, but many characters also each get their own little animated cutscenes between levels to personalize their stories.
The action is a bit less centered on character-grinding with this one as each one only has six stages to complete their story; it's more about experiencing all the different maps and story elements. There are some added modes of play that render a point to powering them up, though. "Free" mode lets you play story maps by placing any character in positions that specific ones are usually in, and "Survivor" mode has you explore a massive tower for gold and treasure with only limited ability to save. There's also an entirely new mini-game called "Sugoroku" that stands apart from everything else and is basically a pared-down version of the Itadaki Street board games that adds the twist of musou mini-game competitions when two players land on the same tile.
Aside from these generally well-done content additions, SW2's big win is simply in reversing course on some experimental elements of the first game that dragged everything down. The biggest being the elimination of the tedious and frustrating "castle infiltration" missions that were woven into the story mode. Some maps now have smaller castles or forts that are built in, usually as a final objective to storm, but they contain none of the garbage from the prior game. Survivor mode also bears some similarity but it too has none of the frustrating elements, liked the timed checkpoints and the constant booby traps.
That isn't to say it's all sunshine and roses, however. The prequel had some questionable map design elements and some of those carry over here. The "sub-mission" structure is a little less demanding here, but remains frustrating at times. Aside from when you're playing a character for the first time from level 1, there's almost no chance of losing by getting killed. 95+% of your losses will be because most maps task you to protect multiple allies as a failure condition, those allies are scattered all over the map, and they often are completely incompetent and can easily get taken out by a pack of mooks let alone a tough enemy commander. So there's still a lot of running frantically all over maps, which are now sometimes mazelike to boot, to personally intervene and protect people before they die.
In terms of aesthetics, the in-game battlefields are the same murky mess as always. Though this does have the upside of making emulation requirements unexpectedly light for a game with this many characters, you won't need a heavy gaming rig to run it. The art outside of battle is also generally improved, with a brighter and richer color palette than usual for these PS2-era Koei titles. The music keeps the same basic style of driving techno beats overlaid with feudal Japanese music, but actually leans much more toward the traditional instruments in this one. I thought the first game's soundtrack was forgettable, but I really liked this one.
There's a fair argument to be made that if you have one of these musou games, at least among the crop for the PS2 and Xbox, you've got them all. But this one is at least as good as all the others to jump in with, and decidedly better than some. It's definitely the best introduction to the Samurai Warriors branch, rendering the flawed first game pretty much unnecessary. Among the early PS2 games I think I'd actually put this one behind Dynasty Warriors 4 among my personal favorites.
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